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Kaiten pilot Yūzō Watanabe
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Tokkō no shima 4 (The Isle of Tokkou 4)
by Syuho Sato
Hōbunsha, 2012, 178 pages
The manga book series Tokkō no shima (The Isle of Tokkou), now up to
four volumes, tells the story of kaiten pilot Yūzō Watanabe starting with his
training at the kaiten base on Ōtsushima, a small island in Tokuyama Bay in
Yamaguchi Prefecture. Volume 3 ended with Masao Sekiguchi's kaiten being
launched from the I-53 submarine so he could lead three enemy destroyers away in
order for the I-53's crew and kaiten pilots, including his close friend
Watanabe, to escape from the enemy. The destroyers had been dropping depth
charges on the submerged I-53 after it had been sighted just south of the
Japanese main island of Kyūshū. Sekiguchi must have succeeded in drawing away
the three destroyers from the I-53, since Volume 4 opens with the arrival of the
heavily damaged submarine to a harbor at Tanegashima, an island south of Kyūshū,
on December 27, 1944.
The submarine commander comments that the crew experienced two miraculous
happenings. First, the submarine returned safely despite the heavy depth charge
attack. Second, the three remaining kaiten weapons carried by the mother
submarine seem to not have suffered any visible damage. Therefore, he decides
that their mission as part of the Kongō Unit, which had departed from
Ōtsushima
Kaiten Base, would continue after the submarine had been repaired. On January 4,
1945, the I-53 departs Tanegashima toward their original destination of Kossol
Passage in the Palau Islands in order to attack Allied ships at the anchorage
there.
The I-53 submarine arrives at Kossol Passage on January 15, 1945. The heavily
guarded anchorage has several Allied ships but no aircraft carriers or
battleships. The kaiten pilots prepare to be launched. Two pilots, Ensign Ito
and Flight Petty Officer 2nd Class Watanabe, enter their kaiten after the
submarine surfaces since these two kaiten do not have any interior passage from
the mother submarine. Chief Petty Officer Arimori enters his kaiten from a tube
that connects the submarine to his kaiten. The kaiten weapons piloted by Ito and
Arimori are the first ones to be launched, but both did not succeed in their
suicide mission to blow up an enemy ship with the explosives packed into the
kaiten's front part. Itō's kaiten explodes when it hits an underwater mine
attached to an anti-submarine net guarding the anchorage. Arimori's kaiten
avoids the anti-submarine net but explodes when hit by gunfire from enemy ships
after his kaiten was spotted.
Watanabe also receives an order to launch his kaiten, but it does not release
from the submarine. He yells out words of extreme frustration at not being able
to complete his suicide mission and to die in battle like his close friend Masao
Sekiguchi. Water starts to leak steadily into the kaiten, and toxic fumes fill
the air within the kaiten interior. Watanabe passes out, and finally he is shown with his
face down in the water filling up the kaiten. The submarine captain orders a
rescue attempt, which is only possible if the submarine surfaces since there is
no passage from the submarine to Watanabe's kaiten. The final frames of Volume 4
show the I-53 as it surfaces, but it is spotted by enemy ships. Most
likely the series will have a Volume 5 that reveals whether or not this rescue
attempt will be successful.
In actual history, the I-53 submarine did carry four kaiten manned torpedoes
to Kossol Passage in the Palau Islands (Konada 2006, 116-25; Mediasion 2006, 47,
80). Three kaiten weapons were launched in the darkness of the early morning of
January 12, 1945. One kaiten piloted by Hiroshi Kusumi was lost before he could
reach the anchorage. The other two kaiten torpedoes, piloted by Ensign Osamu Itō
and Chief Petty Officer Bunkichi Arimori who appear in the manga story, lose
their lives and apparently did not succeed in their attacks since there is no
record of damaged Allied ships on that date at Kossol Passage. The kaiten
piloted by Ensign Minoru Kuge filled with gas prior to his launch, and he passed
out before the order for launch. The submarine surfaced in the darkness and
recovered him. Kuge's experience has some similarities to the fictional account of
Watanabe in Volume 4.
As in the previous three volumes, Volume 4 does not have long dialogues. Many of the intense emotions experienced by the
kaiten torpedo pilots
are depicted in the comic drawings.
Sources Cited
Konada, Toshiharu, and Noriaki Kataoka. 2006. Tokkō
kaiten sen: Kaiten tokkōtai taichō no kaisō (Special attack kaiten
battles: Kaiten special attack corps leader's reminiscences). Tōkyō:
Kōjinsha.
The Mediasion Co. 2006. Ningen gyorai kaiten (Kaiten
human torpedo). Hiroshima: The Mediasion Co.
Yūzō Watanabe's kaiten, stuck on top
of I-53 submarine, starts to fill with water
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